Have you ever been Zoom-bombed? Zoom bombing is the unwanted, disruptive intrusion, generally by internet trolls and hackers into a video conference/meeting. In a typical Zoom-bombing incident, a teleconferencing session/meeting is hijacked by the insertion of materials that are lewd, obscene, racist, or anti-semitic in nature, typically resulting in the shutdown of the session. Zoom bombing can be mild or severe, and can include racist, hate, or pornographic material.
Here are some tips for running secure online meetings to prevent hackers from interfering:
- Have all participants register to attend. Hackers have no time to register for events.
- Disable guest screen sharing to prevent unauthorized access to your meeting.
- Require the host to be present to ensure that only authorized participants can join the meeting.
- Keep your personal meeting ID private to prevent unauthorized access.
- Use a password to enter the meeting to keep hackers out.
- Lock the meeting once a quorum is reached to prevent unauthorized access.
- Generate a random Meeting ID when scheduling your meeting and require a passcode to join. You can share these details privately with respective attendees.
- Enforce meeting starting rights to ensure that only authorized participants can start the meeting.
- Ensure passwords are strong and only provide passwords to authorized attendees.
- Schedule a webinar where only presenters are visible, and can take control of the microphone or screen.
- For meetings, only have co-hosts do screen sharing. Any presenter can be a co-host so that others cannot take control of the screen.
- Enable the waiting room feature to ensure that only authorized participants can join the meeting.
- Have someone monitoring the waiting room and activities in the room to ensure that only authorized participants are allowed in.
By implementing these tips, you can help ensure that your online meetings are secure and free from interference by hackers. Remember that part of resilience is coming back quickly and not letting any setback drag you behind, so it’s important to stay vigilant and take proactive measures to prevent security breaches.
